Family Cardboard Creations

Working with Cardboard Tutorial

Link:  ikatbag

Begin with the tutorial above from I Kat Bag that covers everything you ever wanted to know about working with cardboard - all types of cardboard.  Before reading this post, I honestly had never thought about all of the different options in cardboard.    After watching this tutorial, you will be inspired by the following posts to make some wonderfully innovative creations - all from a box.  And don't miss the must-have cardboard tool kit at the end of this post.   


Idea Blog #1

Get Crafty with Boxes
Link: Red Ted Art Blog

Inspiration Blog #2

7 Tips for Working With Cardboard

Link:  Inner Child Fun

Check out this great tool kit for working with cardboard!

MakeDo Kit's Product Description:
"So long, empty cereal boxes, plastic bottles and old CDs piling up in the trash. Hello, magical playhouse, flying car and anything else your creative mind can imagine. With Makedo FreePlay Kit for One, you can recycle common household items into limitless creations using the kit’s fasteners, connectors and plastic safe-saw. The parts are all reusable so when you’re done with one creation, just pull it apart and make another one. Whatever you decide to make, you’ll exercise creativity and coordination skills while turning trash into treasure and learning about sustainability."

Purchase by clicking on the image below:

A Family Drive-In Movie Night

Jack Larmore

After seeing Nate & Anita Larmore's FB post about their Drive-in Movie night, I asked Anita to share the details along with her pictures.   I know her post will spark your imagination and inspire you to create your own drive-in movie night for your family, playgroup, school group, or church's children's ministry.   Welcome our guest blogger, Anita Larmore & read on - you are in for a treat!!!  

Deni Corbett

Create your very own Drive-in Movie   

Any 21^st century mom living in America today has boxes.  It is the day we live in… wireless internet, free shipping, and ‘no kids anywhere’ kind of shopping!

Our project today involves boxes.  Big ones!  CHILD-SIZED ONES, as a matter of fact!  If you are like me, boxes abound.  I can’t wait for recycle day just to get rid of them!  Here in CA, they’re in the garage and for all you lucky folks with basements and attics, you have them there!  And if you can’t find one big enough, there’s always your local grocery store. 

It is time to hold a drive-in movie night for your kiddos.  One they won’t soon forget.  Send out invitations. The sky is the limit on what you can create.  And soon your living room or your church or even your deck on a warm summer night, will be full of cars, giggling children and popcorn galore.  

Once you have found a box large enough for your child to sit comfortably, here is how you assemble it so that your child can see out of the top.

1. Cut off three of your box’s lid flaps, leaving the fourth flap to become the windshield of the car.
2. Use the flaps that you cut off to shape two triangular pieces that will secure the sides of your windshield into the position you like best.
   
   
3. Use duct tape to secure the box into shape (duct tape is also easier to paint over than standard packing tape).
4. Prepare a well-ventilated outdoor area to spray paint your box.  Apply several even coats until the car looks right to you.  If you run out of time like we did one year, construction paper will work in a pinch!
   Once the painting is done, here are some ideas for those extras that will make your car pop!
5. 
   Wheels:  You can attach wheels made from paper plates or cut out four large circles from construction paper.  Draw rim details onto your wheels or glue a colored printout of wheel rims from the internet.

Windshield:  Glue a windshield cut from construction paper to the front of the angled flap on top of your car.
Headlights/taillights:  Draw lights or glue colored printouts of headlights and taillights to the front and back of your car.  You can even have working headlights by cutting out the center of your headlights and inserting flashlights that can be turned on at your event. 

Katie Larmore

Hood emblem:  Draw a hood ornament or glue a colored printout to the front of your car.

License plates:  Draw a license plate or glue a colored printout to the front/back of your car.

Decals and décor:  Your child will have fun with stickers, markers, and decals to further decorate the exterior of the car. Many details can be drawn with thick-point permanent marker or printed from photos found on the internet for more realistic detail Dads will care more about the realism than you probably will.  When my husband was involved in the finishing part of this project, it was all about replicating his favorite car.  Googling key words like “wheel rim” or “hood emblems,” he meticulously created his dream car (since he’ll never own it).  Perhaps the purple was not his top choice, but it was for his little girl. 

Steering wheel:  Using a pencil skewered through a paper plate decorated for the part, you can add a steering wheel. 

Dashboard: Cut out and decorate pieces or print out color decals for dash instruments such as Speedometer, Tachometer, Radio, etc.

Mandy Larmore

When you are done, all that’s left is throwing in a pillow or a stool, dimming those lights, popping in that movie, filling up those popcorn bowls, and you have added yet another “Once upon a time” memory in your child’s life.  

Anita Larmore
Fireflies Guest Blogger

CLIP Review: Christina Katerina and the Box

Author:  Patricia Lee Gauch
Illustrator:  Doris Burn

The first time I saw the cover of this book my face broke out in a great big grin. Many of you are looking at Christina and doing the same thing, aren't you?  What is it about crawling in a huge old empty box that fills a child with such wonder and imagination?

Christina is your typical "box-loving" kid.  Although she can turn hatboxes, bakery boxes and shoe boxes into  all kinds of delightful things to pass the time - nothing quite hits the jackpot like a refrigerator box!  Her original plan for a castle goes along peacefully for her and her bears for several days...until, well, perhaps you should find that out for yourself. Let's just say that friends often have a way of changing our plans. And castles make pretty good clubhouses...and racecars...

We are going to be sharing many more ideas centered around cardboard and boxes during the month of March. Keep checking in with Fireflies - you don't want to miss a single one of our posts!

  

Mary Byrne Kline

Poem: The Cardboard Box

Thank you, Lara Dunning for this delightful poem.   Oh, the memories it stirred in my heart.   What child doesn't love an empty refrigerator box and some crayons?  Mine certainly did!

Deni Corbett

This is the perfect poem to go along with our Fireflies' Box Theme this month!

[Verbal Communications]

Photo credit and directions to make this airplane - minimocha blogspot

"Childhood Memories of The Cardboard Box" 

Enormous
Refrigerator box
Crayon
Markers
Scissors
Imagination

Fortress?
Sailboat?
Time Machine?
No…Rocket Ship!

Cut out windows
Colored dials
Bright red buttons
Pointed tip
Cardboard wings

Helmets on
Engine on
We’re ready

Blast Off!

by
Lara Dunning

March Reflections: What's In the Box?

Keeping myself entertained as a child was easy. I required only one of three things: a doll, a book, or a box.  The size or shape of the box didn't really matter. Whether it be a shoe box, a packing box my parents had received a package in, a shoe box, Kleenex box, or joy of joys - a large box someone had discarded after buying an appliance! - I was delighted to take it and turn it into something magical and wonderful to treasure until the next box came along.

Each spring in preparation for Easter, my sisters and I, as well as our neighborhood friends, would plan a wagon-tricycle-bicycle parade. This meant putting streamers, flowers, ribbons and anything else we could talk our moms out of to decorate our "wheels" for the parade. For me it meant decorating boxes for my dolls to sit in while I pulled them proudly in my scratched up little red wagon. I needed one rather large box for Betsy Lee, my biggest and dearest doll. I can still see how amazing she looked in the brightly crayon colored box with ribbons glued to it. Next came my pink elephant, who sat in a shoe box. Mom had given me pieces of red felt to line the inside of the box. I tried to get our chihuahua to sit in the wagon, but no luck, so I had to put my best Doris Day paper doll in her fanciest dress in a small oatmeal box. She could just peek out the top without blowing over. What a parade! The neighborhood came alive with all of us kids prancing, shouting and laughing!  Betsy Lee slept in her box bed for many weeks after that.

"Oh, Mary, come quick!" my younger sister shouted a spring morning soon after. Following her outside, I saw what had her so upset. A tiny hairless baby bird had fallen from its nest and was lying on the ground.  Mama helped us feed it with an eyedropper, but prepared us for the inevitable outcome. Sure enough, our little birdie couldn't survive - even with our tender care.  My sisters and I knew what we had to do - plan a funeral and invite our friends. But first...a box. I got to work. Only the best would do. I got a long Kleenex box, emptied out the tissues, colored flowers on the inside, and lined it with cotton. After tenderly laying the little bird inside, we put saran wrap over the opening of the box. What a service!  The neighborhood came alive with all of us kids singing, shouting and praying!

Goodness! I could go on and on. I could tell you about the time my own children made a pirate fort in a refrigerator box and played for hours with their grandpa, until he went missing. Finally one of our little boys saw "Tampa's" feet sticking out of the "pirate ship"! (Grandpa had fallen asleep!) But that's another story...

Mary Byrne Kline

Fireflies' theme this month is a cardboard box.  Don't miss a single post as our Fireflies' team share book reviews, recipes, crafts, an art masterpiece, a visual art exercise, poems, and music - all centered around the cardboard box!   

I'd LOVE to hear a story about your childhood experiences with a cardboard box. Please share [comment below] for a chance to win one of our March Fireflies' CLIP books.